With this the Frenchwoman rose, and, gliding through the circle, retired to the further end of the room. Ernest followed her with his eyes. Suddenly she beckoned to him, and he approached and seated himself by her side. "Mr. Maltravers," said Valerie, then, with great sweetness in her voice,--"I have not yet expressed to you the delight I have felt from your genius. In absence you have suffered me to converse with you--your books have been to me dear friends; as we shall soon part again, let me now tell you of this, frankly and without compliment." This paved the way to a conversation that approached more on the precincts of the past than any they had yet known. But Ernest was guarded; and Valerie watched his words and looks with an interest she could not conceal--an interest that partook of disappointment. "It is an excitement," said Valerie, "to climb a mountain, though it fatigue; and though the clouds may even deny us a prospect from its summit--it is an excitement that gives a very universal pleasure, and that seems almost as if it were the result of a common human instinct which makes us desire to rise--to get above the ordinary thoroughfares and level of life. Some such pleasure you must have in intellectual ambition, in which the mind is the upward traveller." "It is not the /ambition/ that pleases," replied Maltravers, it is the following a path congenial to our tastes, and made dear to us in a short time by habit. The moments in which we look beyond our work, and fancy ourselves seated beneath the Everlasting Laurel, are few. It is the work itself, whether of action or literature, that interests and excites us. And at length the dryness of toil takes the familiar sweetness of custom. But in intellectual labour there is another charm--we become more intimate with our own nature. The heart and the soul grow friends, as it were, and the affections and the aspirations unite. Thus, we are never without society--we are never alone; all that we have read, learned and discovered, is company to us. This is pleasant," added Maltravers, "to those who have no clear connections in the world without." "And is that your case?" asked Valerie, with a timid smile. "Alas, yes! and since I conquered one affection,--Madame de Ventadour, I almost think I have outlived the capacity of loving. I believe that when we cultivate very largely the reason or the imagination, we blunt, to a certain extent, our young susceptibilities to the fair impressions of real life. From 'idleness,' says the old Roman poet, 'Love feeds his torch.'" "You are too young to talk thus." "I speak as I feel." Valerie said no more. Shortly afterwards Lord Doningdale approached them, and proposed that they should make an excursion the next day to see the ruins of an old abbey, some few miles distant. CHAPTER X. "If I should meet thee After long years, How shall I greet thee?"--BYRON.